Congrats on your first solo tour. How do you prepare yourself?
To be physically fit is essential. I’m not obsessed with it, but as you hit your 40s, you start to pay for things. I started having back trouble and all the things that people who touch 40 know about.
You’ve said live performances were traumatic.
You’re looking at an audience, they’re looking at you, your mind is saying, “I hope I can remember the rest of this song. Maybe the next verse I’m going to blank out.” You have these dialogues in your head. Suddenly it comes to you, if you’re lucky; sometimes you blank out.
Would you say for the most part you feel at peace with yourself?
No, I’m not at peace with myself. I’m not at that place. When I became 40 there was a kind of big shift that took place within me because I was leaving the youth culture, and it was leaving me. I thought, “I don’t identify with this anymore, and I don’t identify with that anymore, and that looks like such bulls–t and I just started kind of withdrawing, withdrawing, withdrawing. The last eight years have been extremely turbulent in all kinds of respects. But maybe this is part of one’s evolution–that we have this golden, rosy notion that we get to a certain age and everything becomes wise and it’s all fine, and actually, maybe that’s when the s–t hits the fan.
